LOW - David Bowie (1976)

"THERE'S OLD WAVE.  THERE'S NEW WAVE.  AND THERE'S DAVID BOWIE."

This catch phrase set in my mind for a long time.  I was never a DB fan for a start - I found his music difficult to penetrate in the beginning.  I had absolutely no idea why people like his music.  I noticed his presence during my high school years (ie late 70s to early 80s) from his Berlin Trilogy period to Scary Monster and Super Creeps.  I got turned on to his music only when Let's Dance came out in 1983; that same year when everyone went mad for him for the same reason.  At that time I think he was visually quite exciting from head to toe and the music was fashionable (no pun intended).  He got me interested enough to work my way back into his music; with everything from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke.

I picked up a cassette version of "Low" in the summer of 1983 and listened to it via my Walkman.  I have no idea what he was trying to express - one side of it was 7 songs crafted in pop/rock mode; and the other side with 4 instrumentals crafted with help from Brian Eno.  The songs took a while to assimilate, to really get into the groove and to later appreciate the enormous influence on the "future generations" of rock musicians.  All the songs on side 1 was executed with, seemingly at first, the lack of feelings.  They're cold, and they didn't mean anything to anybody.  Only with repeated listenings did I discover that the songs contain layers of emotions delivered with extreme precision - the way the drums were supposed to sound, the arrangements of the synths, the duration of the songs etc;  The 4 songs on side 2 went even further by extending the concept of "ambient music" first pioneered by Brian Eno on his previous and subsequent albums such as "Music For Films", "Music For Airports", "Apollo", "Thursday Afternoon", etc;  It was very shocking to find out that all the songs on side two were vocal-less; and that they were all about textures evoking various degrees of intrigue.   

I think most of the fans, myself including, were initially stunned by the artist's determination to deliver a product this bold (in its conception) and unprecedented (in its execution) - that alone won enough respect by his admirers and his peers.  His subsequent follow-up, "Heroes" further consolidated the concept laid here, but this is where it all began.  Progressive.  Avant-garde.  Pop.  Rock.  Out of reach.  Commercial suicide.  Not giving a shit.  Whatever you want to call it.  A classic nonetheless.